Safety First
by Mertiya
Summary: Harley seems to be playing hard to get, and the Joker isn't happy about it.


**Disclaimer: **Don't own any of it.

**A/N: **Many thanks to Dracheheim, who betaed, and who has written his own epic Joker fic (called Punch Line; you should read it). Also, warning, this contains smut. PLEASE don't read it if it will upset your sensibilities! (I put this warning on there because I spent a VERY long time being very careful about what I was reading on here; I'm aware that the M rating should be enough but I like being extra safe.)**  
><strong>

**Safety First**

The Joker woke to the clanging of the Arkham alarm bells and a disturbing realization. Harley Quinn hadn't tried to play hide the salami with him in precisely a month. As the orderlies rushed past shouting in confusion, he sat up and decided he must have miscalculated.

On March seventh, she'd managed to get him in bed with some judicious flirtation mixed with flattery. On March eighth, he'd needed some stress relief, and Harley had shown up wearing a transparent negligee, so he'd obliged her. On March ninth, they'd pulled a heist on one of the new up-and-coming Gotham banks, which Harley had complained about because she said she needed more 'alone time' with him. By March tenth, they were cooling their heels in Arkham again, and it was now the morning of—

-One of the inmates barreled past, waving a machine gun and yelling.

"_Will you keep it down_!" the Joker shouted, banging on the glass of his cell. Nobody paid any attention, and he retreated to his bed with a ferocious scowl on his face. Somebody else to go on his list. It was a pretty short list. Currently, the only person on it was the orderly who had ignored him when he asked for salad dressing last night. All the other entries on the list were scratched out.

Back to the problem at hand. It was now the morning of the tenth of April. They had been incarcerated at Arkham for an _entire month_ and not once—not _once_—had Harley tried to put the moves on him. She'd been solicitous, checked in on him, not bothered him when he threw things at her head (come to think of it, that was unusual for Harley; she usually didn't give up that easily), given him massages, fed him, found him entertainment—_but she hadn't tried to seduce him. Not once._

This was ridiculous. This was wholly unacceptable. _Unacceptable_. Something had to be done about this.

* * *

><p>Harley Quinn was having a nightmare.<p>

She was fighting Batgirl. This was not, in itself, a nightmarish proposition. Batgirl, Batman and Nightwing seemed to take great pleasure in always showing up just at the crucial moment during a heist. It was when Harley finally succeeded in knocking Batgirl flying across the room (which really did not happen often enough) that the nightmare started.

One of the henchmen Mister J had brought was turning to where her Puddin' was standing. "We've gotta get out of here!" he yelled. Mister J was taking a step backward after managing to force Batman to duck.

"You idiots!" Mister J called back. "Shoot the Bat!"

She should have known. She'd hired the guy, hadn't she? She thought he looked kind of antsy, but hench-guys often did.

"This is your fault!" the henchman shouted. Then he raised the gun and opened fire on Mister J. Bullets tore through his purple jacket, sending him staggering backwards.

Harley screamed. She was across the room in an instant, her elbow slamming into the back of the man's head, as her other arm grabbed for the gun. There was a wild, flailing moment before her hand closed on it, and then she had it tucked under the crook of her arm. The man started to turn around, raising his arms. "Now, honey—" he began.

"Harley—don't!" Batgirl's voice called from somewhere, but Harley wasn't listening. Blood spattered across her white face paint as she depressed the trigger. She was still screaming.

She threw the gun to the side and fell to her knees beside Mister J, who was lying in a rapidly-widening pool of his own blood.

"Puddin'!" she screamed. The front of his orange vest was soaked, and in several places his purple suit coat was torn where the bullets had caught it. He blinked his eyes as she landed beside him.

"H-harls," he panted, then coughed. "Ow."

"Where does it hurt?" She pulled him into her arms. "Oh, Mistah J, where does it hurt?"

"Doesn't…hurt…" he whispered, then put up a white-gloved hand and touched her cheek. "Harls…I never told you…"

"What are you saying? It's gotta hurt! I—I think I killed him."

He laughed, a rasping laugh that turned into a cough halfway through. "That's my girl!"

"It's my f-f-fault!" she wailed, starting to cry. "I hired him! Oh, Mistah J, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"Now, now, Harley, everybody…makes…mistakes." He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

"H-h-hit me," she wept. "You've gotta hit me, you've gotta punish me, this is all my f-f-fault…"

He coughed again, and his voice was noticeably weaker when he answered. "I shouldn't…hit you…kid. Harls, I…I'm sorry. Never told you…"

"Never told me what? Somebody call an ambulance!" Harley shrieked at the top of her lungs.

"Never told you that…I…l-love…" His head lolled limply back in her arms.

"PUDDIN'!" Wracking sobs gripped her body, and she buried her face in his chest, blood, tears and greasepaint all mixing together into a horrendous concoction, but she didn't care.

A black-booted foot impacted the Joker in the ribs. "Oh, for god's sake," Batman said. "You're not dead. Get up."

"DON'T YOU TREAT HIM LIKE THAT!" screamed Harley, getting to her feet and flying at the masked man.

The Joker chuckled and sat up with a groan. "Gotta love a chick who gets into her role. God, my ribs hurt."

Harley looked up from trying to carve her name into Batman's chin with her nails. "P-puddin'?"

He winked at her. "Good scene, sweetheart."

Then the Dark Knight pinched her on the arm—which she didn't recollect having happened at the time—and suddenly she was awake, and in Arkham, and the whole thing was a month ago, and Puddin' was looking down at her with a scowl on his face.

* * *

><p>The Joker looked down at Harley. She was curled into a fetal position on her cot, making little whimpering noises, her chest rising and falling very noticeably. He didn't usually notice things like that, and it annoyed him.<p>

He pinched her on the arm. "Harls," he said. "Wake up."

She woke up with a gasp, her round blue eyes snapping open. "Oh, Mistah J!" she gulped, putting her arms around him and squeezing. Promising start, but when he leaned in close enough that she could kiss him easily, she just clung to him, quivering. Argh. What _was_ it with the girl?

"Harls, am I going bald?" he asked, suddenly.

"Bald, Puddin'?" she responded blankly. "I can check." She wriggled out of his arms, causing him to swear, mentally, and went up on her knees behind him, pressing her body against his back as her feather-light fingers played with his hair. A minute later, she swung herself down beside him again. "Nope! No balding at all!"

He'd already discarded the idea. Another one occurred to him. "Am I getting fat then?"

Her mouth opened in a startled O. "Of course not, Mistah J! If anything, you're too skinny! They don't feed you well enough here! Should I break out and get you anything?"

"No," he grumped, and as she leaned forward, he grabbed her by the upper arm and yanked her forward. "It's the plant-girl, isn't it?" It had to be the plant girl. He was assaulted by images that _shouldn't bother him_, images of Harley naked on the bed as Ivy wandered in and idly leaned forward to kiss her and touch her and—

"What about Ivy?" Harley asked.

"Have you two been pollinating?"

"Pollinating?"

"Grinding the grain, churning the soil, _in short doing the nasty, Harley_!" He grabbed her other arm and yanked her around to face him.

She blinked a few times. "Um, n-no, Mistah J?"

"THEN WHAT IS IT?" he bellowed in her face. "ARE YOU JUST NOT ATTRACTED TO ME ANYMORE?"

Harley squirmed and cowered on the bed. "Of course I'm attracted to you, Puddin'! You're my one an' only!"

"Then _why_—" he punctuated the question with a slap that snapped her head back—"_why_ haven't you been trying to plaster yourself across me the way you normally do, woman?"

Harley looked up at him through bewildered blue eyes. "It ain't safe," she said softly.

The Joker rocked back on his heels. "What."

"You were _shot_, Puddin'! You almost _died_!" The note of plaintive accusation was clear in her voice. "You can't do somethin' like that when you're still injured!" She stuck her nose in the air. "Ivy agreed with me. She said it could be detrimental to your physical wellbeing."

The Joker gritted his teeth. _Well played, Miss Isley. _

Growling in frustration, he pinned Harley to the bed beneath him and caught her lips with his own.

"Mph! Mph-mph-mph!" Harley protested, trying to shove him off.

"Well now, Harls," the Joker grinned. "That's more like it." He moved his mouth to her neck and bit down. Harley gasped and wriggled.

"Stop it, Mistah J! I don't want you to die!" she yelled.

The Joker grabbed one of her pigtails and brought her face directly in line with his. "Harley," he said. "Don't argue with me."

"But, Mistah J—"

He was about to slap some sense into her, when he decided another tack might be better. "Harley," he breathed into her ear, letting his hand drop to caress her breast. She gave a little moaning whimper. "Don't argue with me."

"But, Mistah J—" she pleaded.

"Harley. Shut it." He moved his hand lower and was rewarded with a squeal and a wriggle. He pushed her down onto the cot, and Harley promptly began to moan and struggle at the same time. She reached for the waist-band of his trousers with trembling hands and then pulled them back. With a sigh, the Joker flipped a knife from his back pocket and slit her jumpsuit down the front before he buried his face in her chest and began to lick.

He felt it the instant she gave up, the muscles of her body relaxing their struggle, her nails raking along his back in lust, not in protest. The Joker grinned. For a moment he considered stopping, but Harley's ankles were locked around his waist, and in any case, the poor little girl deserved a treat after denying herself like this, however misguidedly. Not too much of a treat, of course. He pulled back for long enough to undo his own jumpsuit before thrusting into her so savagely that she yelped in pain.

Harley tangled her hands in his hair, mewling, as he started up a steady rhythm, both of his hands on her shoulders as he alternatively bit and kissed her lower lip.

Minutes later, the intellectual pleasure at solving this (minor?) inconvenience coupled with the animalistic pleasure at Harley's squeals and moans brought him sharply to climax. In the normal run of things, he would have stopped there, but instead, he leaned forward and administered three more sharp thrusts, bring Harley to her own screaming orgasm as he grunted, "I. Feel. Fine."


End file.
